Overheat protection is not as vital as some are making it out to be. I have only one board that has anything close to that and I've got it disabled. What I DON'T have disabled is the CPU fan warning and shut down. That's the only one you really need to worry about.

I chose the Gigabyte as I have had a friend who had experience with that ASUS board. He bought it online and got it, and upon plugging it in, not a damn thing worked. It said that the CPU was bad. Indeed the CPU was bad, but when he bought a new CPU and put it in, it said that that CPU was bad too, which it was not.[Sound familiar anybody??] With over 36 jumpers, troubleshooting can be a pain in the buttocks. And since most people would disable them through BIOS anyway, why did they even waste space with adding them. I like Gigabyte because you CAN change their AGP voltage, and their CPU core voltage can be turned to 1.925v, versus standard 1.85v. Plus the Gigabyte does have a NIC. Btw Datektrader, you have problems.

you left out the part about how easy it was to get the board returned and replaced, anyhow they pay the return shipping short of that 59 bucks for 120 dollar board is still a sweet deal even if it had to be returned once